Labour Orgy

A collaboration with Lynne Kouassi

Site-specific installation at Hotel Alma, Zurich, commissioned for Hotel Noel

December 2022

Lynne Kouassi and Nora Heidorn’s joint artistic project Naturkulturpolitik took the form of the site-specific installation Labour Orgy for a hotel room in Zurich. Their project examines with care and criticality the illustrations of labour scenes in the book Labour Among Primitive Peoples (1883) by the American obstetrician George Engelmann. Kouassi and Heidorn made wax-painted and hand-dyed textiles, an aromatherapy blend, and customised window foils for this installation. Designed for the Christmas period, it points to the embodied acts of both sex and birth, which are disavowed or mystified in the Christian myth of the Mary’s “immaculate” conception. 

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